‘What Are We Doing Here? Essays,’ by Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson is rightly famed as one of our most original, risky and rewarding novelists, but she is lesser known for the volumes of essays she’s steadily produced since her 1980 debut, “Housekeeping.” That’s too bad, as these essays are distinctly unlike anything else available in contemporary American literature. Inspiring, essential thought that is in deep conversation with the novels, they spring from the long American tradition of Jonathan Edwards, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James and Wallace Stevens, engaging with parts of our heritage that have been forgotten, ignored or maligned.

Robinson’s latest collection is by turns invigorating, learned and problematic in ways that generally enhance its overall appeal. At the core of the book is Robinson’s passionate argument that we must reassess the history of the United States. As she fleshes out this reassessment in the essays, I find her insights frankly thrilling and original as they pertain to one of the world’s great governing systems. She wants to give Puritanism credit as a central force in the development of American democracy, and she wants us to re-envision our nation’s emergence within the politics of 17th century Britain, as it dethroned its king in what Robinson reminds us was the world’s first modern revolution.

What that amounts to in practice is very much in-depth Puritan and British history. These are swampy, sometimes murky essays, although they are also stunningly written and will make you see with new eyes. Obscure as Robinson’s subject matter can be, she always links it to crucial contemporary debates in politics, aesthetics and faith. She is also our great spokesperson for those unquantifiable, hard-to-commodify abstractions like soul, mystery and beauty, arguing for their role in our national formation, and making an energizing case for their continued vitality.

Robinson is fond of reminding us she’s unfashionable: She comes from Idaho, has shunned the cosmopolitan coasts to live and teach in Iowa, and sticks up for thinkers who have largely been reduced to a historical asterisk. She also loves to use unlikely heroes to make her points: Her meditation on “hope” begins with an absolutely gorgeous story about a tiny old lady who defined hope as reuniting with her grandmother’s love in heaven. This woman becomes a motif through which Robinson makes admirable and palpable a notion that we too often debase as ephemeral and naive.

Despite, or perhaps because of, resolutely going her own way, Robinson has maintained a vast relevance. She discusses her relationship of mutual admiration with President Obama, currently the most liked man in America, and she also reveals a newfound fascination with cutting-edge cosmology; this latter gives these essays a source of mystery and possibility that is likely our closest secular cousin to what religion once felt like. Speaking of religion, her progressive vision of it — “the individual and communal embrace of the particulars of a faith” — makes the concept expansive enough to contain secular beliefs like government and science.

Robinson believes in the Christian God, and this faith draws her toward what is probably the most challenging idea in “What Are We Doing Here?”: her unflinching belief that humanity occupies a special place in the cosmos. We are not a speck of dust in an unimaginably enormous universe, but rather a central, necessary part of this mysterious reality. This idea is provocative, and Robinson gives us much to debate, but she also often drops her rather formidable powers of argumentation to simply assert the truth of this statement. This can be unsatisfying, and I wish she had at times delved deeper.

This touches on a larger challenge to the pieces collected in this book: Robinson frequently asserts a truth rather than argue it. This can make for some difficulties, as when, for instance, she dismisses the entirely of Freudian psychology as a bunch of simplistic nonsense along the lines of phrenology and eugenics. I, for one, would be fascinated to hear Robinson’s case against Freud, as I assume it is as original as the best of her ideas. Unfortunately, all we get here are condescending and frankly unsatisfying dismissals.

This is doubly bad, as elsewhere Robinson so admirably resists the cynicism she deposits on Freud. No one and nothing is simple, she continually tells us, and I agree. But then why bludgeon Freud, not to mention market economists, academics and behavioral scientists, with bad-faith charges that are beneath Robinson’s great, empathic mind?

Lastly, something that seems to be either laziness or vanity mars this book. These pieces were originally lectures, and they have been published unedited. What works in the oral format often doesn’t in the written, and worse, because these pieces were never meant to appear together, the same insights and arguments are repeated throughout, many times nearly word for word. In addition to simply being aesthetically unpleasing, this has the effect of deadening the impact of many of Robinson’s best thoughts.

All that said, this is still Marilynne Robinson we’re talking about, and it should take far more than this to keep a reader from engaging with her bounteous mind. Each of these essays contains quotables and ideas that any of us would do well to carry to our graves, and I assume that many of these words will join the American canon alongside the work Robinson so rightly admires. Challenging, twisty, contentious, surprising, inspiring — Robinson goes after the biggest questions, and proves herself equal to the task.

Scott Esposito is the editor in chief for the Quarterly Conversation, an online periodical of book reviews and essays, and the author of “The Doubles.” Email: books@sfchronicle.com